I picked up Megaton Rainfall this morning for PSVR. It’d been sitting in my shopping cart on the playstation store, waiting for a sale that never came, and when I went to pick up Sinking City this morning, I just decided ‘screw it, $15 isn’t too much’.

It downloaded quickly, so I decided to mess around with it while SC was still downloading. It’s a superhero simulator, with the aesthetics and budget of an Earth Defense Force game. Also, a really weird quasi-religious thing going on, but lets just skip over that. Also, also, apparently built pretty much by one dude, and it’s pretty impressive for that.

After a few missions in, I’d say it was certainly worth the $15. Some of the controls and gestures are a bit wonky and don’t always trigger when you want them to, but on some level, that’s kind of the point. You’re invulnerable, and can fly. The only way you ‘lose’ is by too much of the city and its people getting killed. So causing collateral damage is bad, but the aiming/triggering is bad, so you kind of can’t help it. That said, there are leaderboards for a ‘Score Attack’ mode on each of the missions, and people get through them with an A rating, so obviously it’s possible to get better. In between each mission you get new powers, so always something new happening. Oh, yeah, and the game is a crazy kind of open world- I’m pretty sure he imported real satellite data of some sort, you can (and do) fly up into orbit (or farther…), and come down anywhere you want- there’s landmarks and cities and whatnot (pyramids in egypt, and the Taj Mahal, for example). Sure, it’s all pretty janky and low-res, but the scope is neat.

The Quest pops up a few times a week at BestBuy, Amazon, and a few others. Also the official Oculus Store but it takes a few weeks to get delivered from there. You pretty have have to use an alert website to snag one but they are some that come out every week in a trickle.

The Multidimensional Bakery on the Quill Theater is a must watch. I usually only see the stuff on the Quest, and I was surprised by it on the pc app. I guess there are a few scenes that are PC exclusive because their scope.

It’s a first impression, but Thumper seems easier in VR? I’m playing in Quest, maybe they lowered the difficulty for this version. Not that I mind, I’m super bad at this kind of game.

Also, I’m trying The Climb, but I wish someone makes another attempt at the concept. Something with bigger places, akin to a real location, and more freeform climbing, when you can plan and execute your route. I hate when I see a clear place to put my hands but the game won’t let me. I also wish the game wouldn’t start with you up there already, but instead well on the ground, before going up the first meters, it would give more meaning to the moment where you reach the peak, if you know what I mean.

The real problem is the performance, once you play something a bit more complex than Vainilla Doom with 3d weapons and high res textures, it drops too many frames. The base (GZDoom) isn’t performant enough, and I guess the Android port also could be better optimized.

The Spaceteam game is already out on the Oculus store, it’s crossbuy. Anyone have played it?

Speaking of, the Oculus store has a sale going on since yesterday, but as always it’s kind of underwhelming. In the Rift store, a few games with stronger discounts are Skyworld, Thumpber, SuperHot, Arizona Sunshine, Sprint Vector, Raw Data and Dance Collider.

I laugh, but is there actually VR porn? I am always behind the time on these things.

There are a number of 180° binaural videos available for download and stream covering a wide range of topics. Some even embed signals to activate Bluetooth connected peripherals for maximum immersiveness.

One potential problem with the G2 is how it’ll handle controller tracking in room-scale games (e.g. Half Life Alyx). With the lighthouses for Vive Pro, I have seamless tracking no matter where I move my hands. Concerned that G2 will be a step backwards here.

I’m very much looking forward to the next gen of headsets that will go beyond the Index and Vive Pro, but is the G2 that headset?

I play HL:A on my Quest, which also uses inside out tracking, and I’ve never had an issue. Tracking is seamless, and because it’s wireless I also get full freedom of movement (within my Guardian box) which really helps immersion in that game.

I’ve never had an issue with controllers on my Quest either. Inside-out tracking is amazing, and people sometimes forget that when your hands are out of view, you can’t see them, so fudging the motion using the accelerometers and gyros is more than “good enough” to get by.